


hold a candle

by imprintofadream (imprint_of_a_doe)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Implied Violence, M/M, minor language and violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-16
Updated: 2012-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-18 19:06:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imprint_of_a_doe/pseuds/imprintofadream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>‘So I’ve noticed you do this thing where you touch me a lot? And, don’t get me wrong, I’m cool with it, more than, even, but I can’t help wondering why you do it? Like is it an Alpha thing just to make sure I’m not hurt, or a you thing because—well, I mean, I don’t know.’</i>
</p><p>Or, that fic with the excessive showering and touching.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold a candle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piscaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/gifts).



> written for [teen wolf fall harvest](http://tw-fallharvest.livejournal.com/), specifically for [piscaria](http://piscaria.livejournal.com/). I hope I worked some of your favorite tropes in, and that you can see where your prompts influenced the story. enjoy!!! :D
> 
> title from the song ‘paint the pictures’ by of verona.

**hold a candle**

—

He shouldn’t be so used to the sight of blood dripping from his fingers as the water pours down on him, shouldn’t be so calm about it. There’s probably something wrong with him, a part of him that broke off and sank into the depths. He just doesn’t know exactly when that happened.

“Hurry up, you’re wasting the hot water!”

Stiles leans his forehead against the wall, shivering at the contrast between the heat of his skin and the cool tiles, at the pinkish-red puddle around his feet. “Fuck off, Derek, it’s my house and my shower!”

“I’d like a shower too, if you don’t mind.”

“Do not blame me for being covered in blood and guts and who knows what else, okay, this is _all your fault.”_

He hears something thump against the bathroom door, knows its Derek sliding down to sit there while he waits. He swallows, breathes in deep despite the discomfort, stares down at his toes. The water swirling around them is only tinged pink now, manageable, a little bit of food dye in his shower. He can handle that much, handles much more on a regular basis.

“I don’t _plan_ for this shit to happen.”

Stiles almost slips at the sound of Derek’s voice, flailing in surprise and barely catching himself on the soap ledge even as the shampoo bottle falls to land on his foot. “God _damn_ it, _ow_. Don’t _do_ that!”

“What? What happened?”

Stiles does slip then, when he hears Derek scrambling into the bathroom. He’s standing above Stiles then, curtain in hand, staring down at him, and Stiles would be more embarrassed if Derek’s eyes weren’t so wide, quick and assessing. “Hey, hey, dude, I’m not hurt, okay, like, wow, _go away._ ”

Derek’s face defaults to bitchy alpha and he pulls the curtain across again, though Stiles hears him hop up onto the countertop. “Sorry.”

“Uh-huh, thanks.” He rolls his eyes as he pulls himself back up, bites his tongue against the pain in his ribs. “God, tonight has sucked so bad. It has sucked, like, worse than that thing with the shape shifters? Do you remember that?”

“No, I cleared my user history.”

“Ha, ha.” Stiles grins though, closes his eyes against the spray of the water. It should be weird, knowing what little distance remains between them, that he’s naked and Derek is in the room with him, but he’s not shaky anymore, not filled with panic that feels like shattered glass under his sternum.

What’s weird is that Stiles doesn’t care, doesn’t even _mind_. He and Derek aren’t close the way he and Scott are, and that makes it okay, because there’s no reason to care what Derek thinks of him, whether Derek looks at him a certain way, whether Derek judges his body. As long as he proves himself useful—and he has, by now—Derek won’t cut him out of the pack, won’t deem him unfit. It doesn't matter that they're trapped together in the bathroom, that he probably _should_ be embarrassed. There's no such thing as a private place anymore, anyway.

He’s almost done washing the shampoo from his hair when Derek moves, closes the door with his foot. Stiles hooks his fingers around the curtain, pulls it back to glare at him questioningly. “Your dad’s home,” Derek says, leaning his head back against the mirror. His eyes are open, reflecting the overhead lights, and Stiles stares for a minute before letting the curtain fall back in place.

“So you’re gonna stay in here with me, rather than waiting in my room or leaving? God, you are the least sensible werewolf I know, and I know _Scott_.”

“I told you, I want a shower, and it’ll sound weird to him if the water shuts off and starts running again.”

“Don’t you think your voice in here will ring some alarms for him as well?”

Derek growls softly—for him—but it still echoes off the tiles, still sends shivers down Stiles’ spine, and who cares whether it’s some latent self-preservation reaction or a totally inappropriate lust that flames through him. “So shut _up,_ Stiles.”

“Make me,” Stiles snaps.

Stiles fights not to screech when Derek rips the curtain open, glaring; his eyes blaze, and maybe tonight pushed him over the edge, maybe seeing his pack so scattered frayed his control. “Why do you have to argue with everything I say?”

“Dude, you’re getting water all over the floor. Close the damn curtain!”

“No.” Derek snarls at him, lips lifted from his canines, and at least his jaw isn’t unhinged. Still, Stiles could do without this. “You’re part of this pack. More than that, you’re still a kid, Stiles, and you might be smart, but you’re also reckless and you need people to hold you back sometimes. If you’ve forgotten already, try looking down at your chest. Go on, look.”

Stiles clenches his jaw, glares right back. “You’re not my dad, Derek. I’m not even a wolf.”

“Don’t, Jesus _Christ_ , just stop.” Derek turns away, pushes a hand through his hair aggressively; his skin glistens where the shower spray has ricocheted off of Stiles’ skin onto his, the white shirt damp with more than blood and whatever the minotaur sprayed on them all. “Being human doesn’t mean you’re not pack, and if you’re pack, you answer to me, especially in situations where we’re all in danger.”

“Not when you have no idea what you’re doing.” He’s starting to feel slightly ridiculous now, arguing with Derek while the colder air in the bathroom circulates through the shower. Stiles rinses the shampoo out quickly, snags his towel from where it’s hanging, and steps out. “Your turn, hurry up.”

Derek turns around as he’s wrapping the towel around his waist, still frowning. He doesn’t make a move to get in the shower. “Look, you and I both know that sometimes I have no idea what I’m doing, but neither do you in most situations. You wing it, and sometimes that results in you cracking three ribs and needing stitches when a minotaur’s hoof catches you across the chest. If you’d listened when I told you to stay back—”

His heart thunders and he can barely hear Derek anymore, angry as he is. “What? So you can charge in and get run through with a horn? Because that’s what would have happened if I hadn’t distracted it. Allison wouldn’t have been able to get a clear shot, Isaac couldn’t have gotten Erica out of there, and you would have been _uselessly_ impaled on the horn of a half-bull. I think the means justify the end.”

“Not if you get hurt!” Derek tries not to yell, and Stiles still hopes his dad has the TV on downstairs, anything that might muffle the sound. “It’s not worth it then! You _don’t heal_ , Stiles, not like we do. You’re going to have a scar from that. Every time I see you from now on I’m going to see that and remember how scared I—”

It’s not that Derek gets scared. Objectively, Stiles knows that most of his actions stem from fear, from anger, but Derek remains stoic despite that. He shares more with the pack than he did when they were first forming, but he still tries not to admit how out of his depth he is. Stiles has no idea why Derek has trouble accepting help, because he _trusts_ them now, but he’s never heard Derek say this, never heard it even heavily implied, and it punches through him like another kick from the fucking minotaur.

“Derek,” he says, and he lifts his hand, reaches out.

“Just... stop. I’m going to shower.” Derek backs up, strips his shirt off as he turns away, and Stiles closes his eyes against everything building up in him, against the regret and misplaced hope and God damn him for being attracted at this very moment.

“Look.” Stiles hops up onto the counter, one hand holding his towel in place. “I... I know how desperate fear makes you, okay? But sometimes people get hurt, Derek, and it’s inevitable.”

“Running behind a minotaur to sneak to a fallen packmate does not classify as ‘inevitable’ damage,” Derek interrupts, and Stiles rolls his eyes at the ceiling lights, sighs.

“Obviously. But I was terrified for Erica, and I had a plan, believe it or not. Kind of went to hell in a handbasket when the dude didn’t react to Lydia’s distraction, but I don’t just charge in blindly. I know what I’m doing, or at least what I’m planning to do, and I know the risks.”

“Let someone else take the risk then, Stiles, _talk_ to us.”

He lets out a laugh before he can help it, presses his fingers to the waterproof bandage on his ribs as they twinge angrily. “Dude, you were a hundred yards away, with a minotaur roaring at us, and you had other concerns. It was spur of the moment planning, and I had to take advantage of an opportunity, okay? It’s not like I haven’t gotten hurt before.”

Derek’s quiet for too long, and Stiles glances at him finally, tries not to think about the fact that all of Derek’s lean muscle is on display for him, the shower curtain never pulled across again. There’s a puddle on the floor by now, and Stiles shakes his head. “Look, I’m sorry for not waiting for your call, but sometimes there won’t be time to plot together. One of us might take a hit, yeah, but it’s a necessary risk. We won’t just stand back and watch when you deem it too dangerous, man, that’s not how a team works.”

“A pack isn’t a team.”

“Uh, okay, whatever you say, Mighty Alpha.”

Stiles lifts his head defiantly when Derek finally looks at him, meets his eyes, and Stiles remembers the day Erica knocked him out with that piece from his engine, remembers staring at her eyes to avoid staring at her drop-dead knock-out boobs, okay, and he’s doing the same now. Kind of.

“Stiles.”

“Oh, shut up and finish your shower. My dad’s probably super suspicious by now, man, he probably thinks I’m having erectile issues or something, god.”

Derek’s expression twitches, but he dutifully soaps up, perfunctory, watching the evidence of the night swirl down the drain. He shuts off the water, snags a spare towel when Stiles holds it out to him, and Stiles has to grab the first aid kit and peek into the hall before he leads the way into his room. “Hey, Dad, be right down,” he yells, shutting the door behind them.

They dress quietly, and that tightness binds around him again, smothers him. He pushes it down, back, tries to cover it up with his shirt, but Derek’s there, right there, too serious and too worried; his hand settles over the bandage gently, still heavy as a stone in Stiles’ throat.

“The pack can’t afford to lose you, Stiles. Yeah, I _am_ scared, okay? Because if anything happens to you, then there’s nothing to hold us together. Nobody believes in us the way you do, and it sounds stupid, I know, I told Deaton the same thing, but... it’s true, and it’s important. You, of all of us, need to be cautious.” His fingers curl just the slightest over the edges of the bandage, press against Stiles’ skin, and Derek is so _warm_. “Please.”

“I...”

Derek eyes him meaningfully, drops his palm to slide against the skin of Stiles’ waist, and then backs off, grabs his jacket from where it’s flung across the end of the bed and leaves.

His side tingles as if Derek has just tazered him.

—

Stiles doesn’t hear from Derek for a week and a half, despite the fact that most of the pack comes by to check on him. Isaac yells at him for a little while, but everyone else accepts it, the same way Stiles does, because it really _was_ necessary. Erica hugs him perhaps a little longer than usual, sneaks her hand under his shirt to drain some of the pain, and he feels just a bit like it should be Derek instead.

Now that he looks back on it, he might have been in shock. True, he deals remarkably well with all the paranormal shit they put up with, but even Stiles has a breaking point, even _Derek_ has a breaking point.

He keeps remembering ‘I _am_ scared’ when he shouldn’t be thinking about it, and everytime he fights down whatever emotion is fighting to get out of his chest. He thinks it’s panic—joy—guilt—he has no fucking idea, really, but if Derek were _around_ maybe he might.

Scott helps him figure out a plan to change that, but Derek finds him before they can act.

Technically, Derek finds him because Stiles and Lydia get themselves adopted into a faerie court and he _has_ to, but it’s the result that counts.

Or something.

—

“Jackson! Catch!” Stiles doesn’t look to make sure he’s paying attention, just tosses the flaming branch over, focuses on pulling Lydia with him. The vine around their wrists writhes, squeezing painfully, and Stiles can feel the bones grinding together, grits his teeth against it. Fire hadn’t worked to burn it off, and Lydia’s fingers are spasming against his.

“Fuck, I hate this shit,” he mutters, crouching behind a tree with her. “What the hell do we do?”

“It’s an enchantment, Stiles, it’s not going to undo itself.” She flips her hair back, purses her lips, and tugs on it experimentally; Stiles nearly falls over into her, exhausted and disoriented.

“Can we cut it? Since the fucking fire didn’t work?”

“Faeries are vulnerable to iron. It’s poison to them. If their magic responds to them the way I think it does, the vine should be penetrable if we use some. I don’t know if anything else will work.”

“Well, they’re not likely to keep poison around, hmm? We need something else.” Stiles peeks around the tree, tries to track the action. Erica’s laughing somewhere, Jackson roaring, Boyd silent but deadly, and Scott and Isaac are teaming up against a fae with silver spiderwebs woven into his skin. “Do you think if we stop moving it’ll lighten up on the pressure?”

“Here, let me see,” Derek says, suddenly squatting right in front of them. Stiles flails a bit, lands on his ass, and Lydia shoves him over more in retribution even as she holds out their wrists for inspection. “Would my claws work?”

“Try not to scratch me.” Lydia sighs, glances over her shoulder again when a burst of chittering laughter carries on the wind. “And please hurry so we can leave. I can’t stand the excuses for fashion here.”

Derek rolls his eyes, wraps the fingers of one hand around both of their wrists, and uses the other to slice through. Stiles is willing to bet it’s Alpha magic, but the vine disintegrates immediately at his touch, and then he’s just holding them together, fingers pressed against Stiles’ pulse point.

Stiles tugs his hand back, swallows. “Time to go, I agree. This party sucks, man.”

They get back to the cars somehow, and Stiles thinks they should be concerned about the faeries, about negotiating or something, but Derek hauls them out of the forest and he and Lydia stumble after him, neither protesting. Something must have been in his bloodstream, because he still feels heavy and slow, still doesn’t argue. Derek keeps shooting him these sidelong looks, and maybe it’s worry, disbelief; Stiles rarely goes along silently.

Lydia leans against the side of the Camaro, pulls him to lean next to her while Derek unlocks the doors, his phone at his ear. “Yeah, I have them. Driving them to Deaton and hopefully this is over with. Get the rest of the pack home, Isaac.”

He twines his fingers with Lydia’s, head resting on the roof of the car; he closes his eyes.

—

Stiles wakes up in Deaton’s office, head lolling against the wall behind his chair. His mouth is dry, head pounding, neck sore from falling asleep at such a weird angle. Lydia is curled up under his arm, her face pressed into his chest.

“I feel hungover,” he says, knowing someone must be around. “Can I have some water?”

Deaton grins down at him when he hands a bottle over. “I was surprised you two held out so long. That was a pretty heavy dose of glamour on whatever they bound you with.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Home. Derek is the only one still here.” Deaton gestures over his shoulder, and Stiles cranes his neck to see around him, only half-surprised to see Derek sleeping against the opposite wall. “As soon as Lydia wakes up and I check you both one more time, I’ll send you off.”

He moves off, presumably to continue whatever he was doing before, and Stiles has an unobstructed view of Derek. He looks exhausted even in sleep, tense, his eyebrows low and his fingers twitching. Stiles wants to reach out and squeeze his shoulder, drain some of the tension into himself, and he presses Lydia closer to him in response. Remembers Derek’s skin on his, fingers curled over his pulse point, over his waist—possessive and safe and damaging in that they burn Stiles up from the inside out in a way he’s beginning to want all the time.

When Derek opens his eyes, he focuses on Stiles, immediately, and Stiles can’t breathe for a minute, can’t blink, because he _knows,_ now, what all that skin contact is. The fears, the honesty, the fucking bathroom lights reflecting red off of his eyes when Stiles looked at him.

“Oh,” he says.

Derek’s eyebrows twitch a little before he yawns so widely his eyes start to water. “What?”

“I... nothing. Lydia’s waking up,” he says, watching Derek stand, trying not to stare at the stretch of skin across his hips when his shirt lifts as he stretches. “I need to talk to you later.”

“Talk now.”

“No, like, it’s important. Also, personal.”

Derek looks at him, studies him, and Stiles knows his heart is out of rhythm, knows he shouldn’t be keeping eye contact for this long, but he can’t help it. “Fine,” Derek says, stepping over to check on Lydia. He has sleep gunk in the corners of his eyes, and his jaw cracks when he withholds a yawn; Stiles wants to reach up and touch his temple, wants to see if what he feels is more than a mirror of Derek’s emotions, if his own are legitimate.

He clenches his hand into a fist.

—

“Can I use your shower before we talk?” Derek follows Stiles up the stairs, footsteps heavy, and Stiles silently leads them to the bathroom.

“We can talk while you shower, if you want,” Stiles offers, knows this might be weird now, knows it will definitely be weird in a few moments. Derek doesn’t protest though, just closes the door behind them, and has this bathroom always been so small?

He hops up onto the counter, taking the usual spot, and tries not to watch Derek turn the water on, closes his eyes rather than watch Derek pull his shirt over his head. He can hear his belt buckle clink against the tiles, though, hears the slide of fabric against skin. In a way, it’s worse than seeing it.

“Stiles, just spit it out.”

The curtain slides across the stall and Stiles finally opens his eyes, stares up at the ceiling. He has no idea what to say now, how to say it, whether he even means it. “Uh, first, thanks for coming after me and Lydia tonight, I guess.”

“How do you get into situations like that? I don’t understand how our two self-proclaimed smartest pack members always end up in the most trouble.”

Stiles shrugs, picks at a ragged patch on the hem of his shirt. “No idea, man. This time it was Lydia, though. And they thought I was a changeling.” He snorts.

“Maybe you are.”

“Uh huh, I’m sure.”

“What’s the second thing, Stiles?”

He really hates the shower curtain right now, but he also really loves it, because he can’t imagine talking about this to Derek’s _face_ , god, that’d be horrible. “Uh.”

Derek peers around the curtain, expectant, and Stiles watches a few drops of water trail down his jawline. “Stiles.”

“Fine, God, okay, so I’ve noticed you do this thing where you touch me a lot? And, don’t get me wrong, I’m cool with it, more than, even, but I can’t help wondering why you do it? Like is it an Alpha thing just to make sure I’m not hurt, or a you thing because—well, I mean, I don’t know, which is why I’m asking?”

“I... what?”

Stiles thumps his head back against the mirror a few times, huffs. “You touch me, skin to skin, more than anyone else in the pack. You’ll grab everyone else by their clothes, most of the time, but you always look for skin to skin contact points with me. Why?”

Derek doesn’t answer.

Stiles sighs. “Dude, come on, just answer the question. You know I don’t give up easily.”

And maybe he feels a bit embarrassed, having asked, because maybe Derek never noticed he was doing it, or maybe it’s actually nothing, only he wants to know, wants to hear it from Derek himself.

He’s owed at least that, he thinks, after the thing with the minotaur.

“Derek.”

The water shuts off and Stiles holds a towel out wordlessly, lets Derek take it and push the curtain back. He doesn’t close his eyes this time, holds them steady as Derek frowns at him. “I never noticed I was doing it,” he says, and maybe Stiles would believe that, but Derek’s hand twitches, and it’s _bullshit._.

“Bullshit,” he says, eyes wide. “You can’t lie about this, not now. You owe me the truth, Derek, and I want to know.” Derek glares at him, bends to grab his clothes with one hand and straightens back up, passes him on the way out of the bathroom—Stiles puts his legs up, braces them against the opposite wall to keep Derek in. “No.”

“Stiles.” Derek’s voice is low, dangerous, and he doesn’t care, doesn’t care at all. He slides off the counter to stand in front of him, and they’re of a level height so Derek’s eyes are right in front of his. He’s still damp, hasn’t properly dried off.

“I'm listening.”

Derek stares at him, doesn’t let up, and then he reaches out, puts his hand in the center of Stiles’ chest. “What, like this?”

His heart skips a beat, speeds up, and Stiles shakes his head slowly, lifts his own hand to wrap his fingers around Derek’s wrist. “No. This,” he says, lifts his own shirt and places Derek’s hand back where it was, and his heart absolutely _races_ now, because Derek’s hand is _hot_ , and callused, and large, and Derek _won’t look away_.

He breathes out shakily, fights not to tremble as he waits, and then Derek moves, pushes him back, and Stiles closes his eyes, lets rejection wash over him—yeah, those were definitely his own feelings, not just reflections of Derek’s, because it _stings_.

Until it doesn’t, until he’s up against the door and Derek is pressed against him, cheek against his, fingers spread wide across his chest. He’s vibrating, a low rumble shaking Stiles with him. “Oh,” Stiles says, hand tight on Derek’s wrist still. “Oh.”

“Do I have to answer verbally, or can I show you?”

“Show me.” He breathes in deep when Derek does, keeps his eyes shut as Derek turns his head, and then they’re kissing, close, rough, deep, and Stiles scrabbles to get his hands on Derek’s skin, on his neck, on his shoulders, feels Derek’s other hand clasp around his waist, presses himself up and in. Derek’s mouth is hot, smooth, his stubble rough on Stiles’ face, and it’s _awesome_.

They kiss until Stiles can’t breathe, can only gasp into Derek’s mouth, recycling air between them until Derek breaks away, moves down his neck, and his shirt is over his head then, Derek’s lips pressed against his collarbone, his teeth against Stiles’ chest, scraping over sensitive skin. Stiles’ cock throbs as he grinds forward, finds Derek’s leg. God, that towel is not hiding _anything_ , and then it’s gone, fallen away like any reservations Stiles has about this, about Derek.

This—this is easy, simple, _right_ , and Stiles grins into Derek’s mouth, feels the smile against his own, warm skin on skin. “Still think I’m reckless?”

“Means justify the ends,” Derek says, repeating his argument right back at him, and Stiles laughs, hands clutching him close, laughs until he can’t breathe.

—

**Author's Note:**

> beta-doctored by bets and noorling, encouraged by linsa. thank you, ladies! :D


End file.
